After pre-season testing, the smart money was on Ferrari for a strong performance in Melbourne. But after Lewis Hamilton led every practice session and secured pole position, it looked like Mercedes had retained their turbo-era advantage.

After a terrible start to the weekend that saw both Red Bulls suffer engine penalties and start towards the back of the grid it was down to birthday boy and racing ingénue Max Verstappen to put smiles on the faces of the factory workers back in Milton Keynes with a banzai performance from lights to flag.

Best to begin at the beginning: the man who heads the team that heads the World Championship, Toto Wolff of Mercedes, knows better than most the challenge that Singapore presents – especially when your team is gunning for the drivers’ and constructors’ titles.

Lewis Hamilton’s victory in Italy was a body blow to Ferrari, which yet again had the fastest car, but for the third time in the last four races – along with Germany and Hungary - had failed to win with it.

For the second race in succession, Lewis Hamilton won a race he didn’t expect to win going into the weekend. Ferrari had the faster car in Germany last weekend but rain intervened and Sebastian Vettel crashed.

With over 15 combined years in the entertainment industry working on more than 55 large-scale concerts and festivals, both Singapore GP’s Senior Operations Executive Patrick Chan and Entertainment Executive Sarah Lu know to always expect the unexpected.

Sebastian Vettel drew level with legendary racer Alain Prost on 51 Formula One victories, a real milestone, after this measured drive at Silverstone. He finished ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen on the podium.

What should have been an easy win for Mercedes at a circuit the team have dominated in recent years descended into disaster, when first Valtteri Bottas and then Lewis Hamilton retired with mechanical failures.

Daniel Ricciardo’s F1 future became even more of an open question after a blistering drive that saw the Red Bull driver swoop past Max Verstappen, Kimi Räikkönen, Lewis Hamilton, and Sebastian Vettel before pouncing on race leader Bottas.

“You work for just three days in a year?” – a question Singapore GP employees frequently face when meeting well-meaning associates. We chat with key personnel from the race promoter to find out what they do for the rest of the year in the lead up to Asia’s largest sporting and entertainment extravaganza, the Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix.

First lap drama at the Brazilian Grand Prix set the scene for a thrilling race. While observers were worried that the early ends to both the drivers’ and constructors’ championships would take the shine off the final races of the season, Sao Paulo’s Interlagos circuit delivered a nail-biting race filled with overtaking.

Austin’s Circuit of the Americas was always going to have a vital role to play in the 2017 World Drivers’ Championship, with Lewis Hamilton having the possibility of taking the drivers’ crown at the United States Grand Prix.

Max Verstappen certainly needed that! The Dutchman has shown his pace this season; he’s outqualified Dan Ricciardo 11 times in 15 outings, which is astonishing. But he has also had some terrible luck with reliability and a couple of collisions.

Lewis Hamilton couldn't believe his luck after the start of the Singapore Grand Prix, where he found himself leading from fifth on the grid after the two Ferraris tangled with Max Verstappen's Red Bull on the sprint to Turn 1.

Ferrari’s loyal tifosi were rewarded for their passion with a podium finish from Sebastian Vettel at Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, but it was a tough day on track for the boys in red, with both drivers complaining of handling issues at various points in the race.

Daniel Ricciardo’s Hungarian Grand Prix came to a premature end at the hand of Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen. The pair were fighting for position off the start, and Verstappen drove into his colleague in the matching car into Turn 2, damaging Ricciardo’s radiator and punting him out of the race.

Lewis Hamilton had one of those very special weekends with a stunning qualifying session, pole position and a race, which he was able to completely dominate. He ends the weekend having closed the gap from 20 points to just 1 behind Sebastian Vettel.

It was another great win for Valtteri Bottas, his second of the season after a rocketship start from pole position. The Finn was only a few milliseconds off jumping the start, he described it as the ‘start of my life’ and he needed it on a day when Vettel was on form.

It was a terrible start to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix for Valtteri Bottas, who suffered first lap damage following a collision with Kimi Raikkonen and found himself limping around at the back of the pack, one lap down on the competition before the racing had really gotten underway.

The Canadian Grand Prix comes with a high risk of Safety Cars, and the teams’ strategists plan for at least one SC outing every Sunday at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. There wasn’t long for the strategists to wait during the 2017 race, with Felipe Massa and Carlos Sainz shunting on the first lap and bringing Bernd Maylander out of the garage for his first run of the day.

After the chequered flag fell on Ferrari’s first Monaco victory since 2001, rumours of team orders started to swirl. Pole-sitter Kimi Raikkonen was victim to an unusual strategy that saw the Scuderia effectively hand victory to Sebastian Vettel by pulling the Finn in for fresh rubber at a time when he had no option but to return to the track in heavy traffic.

The best news from a competition point of view coming out of the Spanish Grand Prix was that Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian are locked in a great battle for race wins and the championship and that has not been upset by the programme of car improvements.

Everyone in F1 was happy to see Valtteri Bottas get his first F1 victory. The Finn was quite subdued over the radio after the chequered flag and on the podium and it was interesting that his first emotion was that it had taken a long time for him to get that first win, 81 Grands Prix.

For the second race in succession the battle for pole and for the win was a tightly fought affair between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. Shanghai is a very different kind of track from Melbourne, but the margins in performance were equally tight and that indicates that we are likely to see this battle continue all season.

Even though it was a third consecutive year dominated by the Mercedes drivers Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton, the 2016 season had many highlights; there were some fantastic races and the emergence of a real star in Max Verstappen, who broke the record for the most overtakes in a season of F1.

From Romain Grosjean's crash on the way to the grid, to Marcus Ericsson's shunt in the entry to the pit lane, to Kimi Raikkonen bringing out the red flag to match his red face after crashing on the Safety Car restart, the Brazilian Grand Prix was something of a damp squib punctuated by an awful lot of flying carbon fibre.

Shortly after having a rule created to prevent drivers from repeating the sort of defensive manoeuvres for which Max Verstappen has become notorious, the Dutch teenager found himself on the wrong side of the sporting regulations at Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix.

After the last round in Japan, when a poor start cost Lewis Hamilton his chance at a much-needed win, the pressure was on the pole-sitter to get it right off the line at the Circuit of the Americas. And get it right he did – the Mercedes driver managed to hold the lead up the hill into Turn 1, and behind him teammate and championship rival Nico Rosberg was pushed down to third place by the charging Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo.

Not typically a man to crumble under pressure, when Lewis Hamilton botched his start at Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix, dropping from the front row to eighth place before the end of the first lap, it looked as though the Mercedes driver were waving goodbye to his championship chances.

It was a very popular win for Daniel Ricciardo in Malaysia ahead of Red Bull team mate Max Verstappen. Dan needed that after the disappointment of losing the Monaco Grand Prix due to a team blunder at a pit stop. He really wanted to win a race this season.

The failure by Lewis Hamilton to convert the pole position into the lead in Turn 1 in Monza was the seventh time this season in 14 races that a Mercedes driver has fluffed the start. Mercedes has very few weaknesses, but this is one of them.

The failure by Lewis Hamilton to convert the pole position into the lead in Turn 1 in Monza was the seventh time this season in 14 races that a Mercedes driver has fluffed the start. Mercedes has very few weaknesses, but this is one of them.

There was drama from the outset of Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, with three of the four front-runners colliding at La Source in an incident that left both Red Bull and Ferrari feeling rather hard done by.

The start went very well for Lewis Hamilton and he took the lead from second place on the grid. Starts have not always been his strongest suit this season; three times earlier in the year the roles were reversed and Rosberg had jumped pole sitter Hamilton.

Nico Rosberg crossed the finish line of Sunday’s British Grand Prix in second place, but it remains to be seen whether or not that result will be allowed to stand pending a stewards’ post-race investigation into the legality of some of the radio traffic between the German racer and the Mercedes pit wall.

After a Sunday afternoon GP2 race that saw an endless stream of Safety Cars and more shunts than the bumper cars at a funfair, expectations were high for a dramatic start to the first European Grand Prix since 2012.

The recent Grands Prix in Spain, Monaco and Canada have shown that the chasing pack is closing in on Mercedes, the dominant team since 2014. Max Verstappen won in Spain, his Red Bull Racing team mate Daniel Ricciardo should have won in Monaco and Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari had a good chance to win in Canada. So is the turning of the tide about to happen and which team is best placed?

The cheapest way to enjoy the experience is the Walkabout ticket, which costs around $268 for a 3 Day pass and allows you to move around and witness the action from special bleachers or stands at the side of the track.

The FORMULA 1 SINGAPORE GRAND PRIX is one of the world’s great sporting events, and looks dazzling on TV – but constructing the temporary Marina Bay Street Circuit is all about perfecting the fine details in big numbers.

Ferrari didn’t win the race in Canada, but they can be very pleased with their performance, which was much more competitive than they have been. The team has been waiting on a new turbo for the engine, to fix a problem which had meant that they couldn’t use all the power of the engine.

For the second consecutive race, Daniel Ricciardo lost out on a possible victory through no fault of his own. While the Spanish indignity came as a result of Red Bull choosing to cover the Ferrari of Sebastian Vettel and was simply a strategic error, the Australian’s Monegasque disappointment stemmed from a lack of tyres being ready when Ricciardo was called in to box.

Max Verstappen became the youngest Formula 1 Grand Prix winner at the age of 18, also the youngest to lead a race and looks set to break other records. It’s unusual to win a race on debut for a new team, but to do it mid season with no opportunity for testing is very rare.

Nico Rosberg’s charmed life at the front of the Formula One field continued for a fourth straight race, while team mate Lewis Hamilton again had a troubled weekend. The German won the race to extend his championship lead over Hamilton to 43 points, larger than he enjoyed at any point in 2014.

The first lap of the 2016 Formula 1 Chinese Grand Prix was one of the most dramatic in recent memory, with eventual race winner Nico Rosberg losing the lead to Daniel Ricciardo, - a Ferrari on Ferrari collision - and more bad luck for Lewis Hamilton, who lost his front wing to the Sauber of Felipe Nasr while attempting to avoid Kimi Raikkonen returning to the track.

Lewis Hamilton again fluffed the race start, this time dropping to seventh, after
tangling
with Valtteri Bottas in Turn 1 after another poor getaway. Mercedes estimates that the damage he sustained cost him about a second per lap of performance, which is why he could only recover to third.

Martin Brundle is, for many people, an integral part of a Grand Prix experience – as one of the world’s best-known commentators. But he’s also a former driver, having started 158 Grands Prix. Stewart Bell caught up with the affable Brit to preview 2016 ahead of the new season.

Those who like their F1 nice and loud will be encouraged by the sound of the F1 cars at this year’s Formula 1 Singapore Grand Prix. The hybrid turbo engines were too quiet for many people’s tastes when they were launched. To improve the sound for 2016 an extra exhaust pipe has been added and it has made a difference. Although you still don’t need earplugs at the race track, you can no longer carry on a conversation when a car goes past and they sound far more meaty.

Judging from the first four days of Formula 1 test in Barcelona, this is going to be a more exciting season than 2015, with a very close competition in midfield and Ferrari snapping at the heels of world champions Mercedes.

The Monaco GP was enlivened when Mercedes made a pit call that turned the race on its head. A communication mix-up between leader Lewis Hamilton and pit wall saw the World Champion pit for tyres under a late safety car, when his main rivals stayed out.

After the Brazilian Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton complained that Interlagos offered drivers nowhere to overtake. But during the race, Max Verstappen proved the world champion wrong on more than one occasion.

Nico Rosberg was clearly not a happy man at the end of a cracking US Grand Prix at COTA. He – and his Mercedes bosses – felt that Lewis Hamilton’s move up the inside of his teammate at the first corner was just too hard.

A ‘boat’ being paddled by Sauber mechanics, Toro Rosso drivers playing skittles with Red Bull cans, Nico Rosberg playing football with Niki Lauda, Force India’s Mexican wave – it can only be bored team members waiting for some action as the rain continues to lash COTA at Austin, Texas.

There are many question marks going into Sunday’s Russian Grand Prix about race strategy for the 53 lap race. With so little practice running due to accidents and rain delays, no one has a clear picture of whether the soft and supersoft tyres will require a one or two stop race tomorrow. In the Singapore Grand Prix Mercedes struggled with this tyre combination, but here they have a dominant position as the temperatures are much colder, which suits their car. This is one of the toughest tracks on the calendar for fuel consumption and drivers will have to lift off throttle for up to five seconds per lap to be sure of making it to the finish on the 100kg fuel limit.

After a rain-soaked Friday in Japan, Saturday at Suzuka Circuit dawned bright and sunny. With the conditions normalised, Mercedes were back on top of the timesheets in FP3 after seeming to struggle in the two Friday sessions.

The Singapore Grand Prix is how a Hollywood director would imagine an F1 street race, with its dramatic floodlit race track and 21st century skyline, but there was to be no movie-style ending for Lewis Hamilton, looking to emulate his idol Ayrton Senna’s 41 career victories.

One of the sport’s true greats, 1980 Formula 1 World Champion Alan Jones has always told it like it is. Stewart Bell caught up with the Australian, who was the FIA driver steward in Singapore last year, to chat about his experience.

Lewis Hamilton scored a dominant victory in the Italian GP – and then survived a post-race investigation by the FIA after he was reported for apparently having tyre pressures that were below the minimum requirement set by Pirelli.

Formula One drivers require a lot of strength and cardiovascular fitness to overcome all the G-force that they have to endure over a two-hour race. Going up to speeds as fast as 320km/h, drivers’ heart rates also can hit as high as 200bpm.

It can’t be said that the Belgian Grand Prix was the greatest race of the year, but as expected, it was
a longer-legged type of race where there was overtaking thanks to DRS rather than the do-or-die
attempts seen more recently in Hungary. But the somewhat changed hierarchy seen in qualifying
was maintained in the race; eight different teams scored points with only Mercedes and Williams
having two cars in points-scoring positions and a wide variety of cars scoring.

After its three week break, Formula One has moved from its shortest permanent circuit to its longest
and perhaps expecting a somewhat less frenetic race than that experienced in Hungary three weeks
ago. The frustration of trying to overtake where it’s only just possible made for a thrilling event
before the break; Spa is a longer legged, wide open traditional circuit where overtaking is easier

As a race, the 2015 Hungarian Grand Prix could not have been better timed. With only one
round in the seven week gap between Silverstone and Spa, Formula One was relying on the
Hungaroring to deliver the sort of thriller that would keep the fans talking throughout the summer
break.

It would take a brave soul to bet against a Mercedes win at the Hungarian Grand Prix following the team’s dominance of the weekend thus far, with Lewis Hamilton topping the timesheets at all three practice and qualifying sessions and Nico Rosberg joining his teammate on the front row.

There are races of attrition, and then there’s the 2015 British Grand Prix, which saw one driver fail to start and six fail to finish. But for the 13 men
who made it to the end of Sunday’s race at Silverstone Circuit it was a dramatic afternoon.

It’s a strange thing, but sometimes in racing you get the feeling that a driver just isn’t comfortable in a race or at a circuit, just isn’t on it. I had
that feeling with Lewis Hamilton from fairly early in the Austrian Grand Prix weekend. He was making too many mistakes. Some you forgive as just finding
the limits, but they seemed to keep coming, culminating with the rather embarrassing situation when the fastest two in qualifying – he and Mercedes
teammate Nico Rosberg – ended up parked in the countryside at the end of qualifying. If that happened in Singapore, they’d have two very damaged cars.

It was extraordinary to see both Mercedes off the circuit at the end of qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix on Saturday afternoon. This writer has never
seen that in Formula One certainly not on a dry track. Would they have the same problems in the race itself, was surely the question to be asked? We had
seen lots of drivers off at turns one and eight and nine in practice and here, at the end of Q3, were the two Mercedes parked, one at the start of the lap,
one at the end. But they were still on the front row of the grid.

I’m really not going back to Monaco. I’ve moved on. I don’t even have to think about it, I couldn’t care less about it. I can’t do anything about the
past so there’s honestly no point in thinking about it. I’m thinking about this race, I’m excited” - Lewis Hamilton

How could that happen? Lewis Hamilton was leading the Monaco Grand Prix by 25s with 14 laps to go when Max Verstappen had a big accident at the first
corner, Ste Devote. Lewis stayed out for a lap under first a virtual safety car and then a proper one, but then 1) saw his Mercedes AMG Petronas team
readying pit equipment in the pit lane on a giant screen, and then 2) was called into the pits for a change of tyre.

Lewis Hamilton scored his first pole position at Monaco on Saturday afternoon with a time some three tenths quicker than his teammate, Nico Rosberg, who
has been on pole and won for the last two Monaco Grands Prix. Almost as usual, Sebastian Vettel was in the mix in third place for Ferrari, maintaining the
record of the first three in almost every race so far this year.

When Nico Rosberg took the chequered flag at the Circuit de Catalunya on Sunday, securing his first victory of the season, it looked as though the 2015
title-fight was finally underway, a resurgent Rosberg ensuring that Lewis Hamilton would not sleepwalk his way to a third title with little opposition.

On Sunday afternoon, the Circuit de Catalunya will become the next battleground in Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton’s fight for Silver Arrows supremacy in
the 2015 title fight. It was the German who claimed pole position for the first time this year, with Mercedes securing three front row lock-outs in the
first five races.

The first four Grands Prix of the 2015 season have provided plenty of entertainment, and it's clear that we will enjoy a fantastic battle between Mercedes
and Ferrari as the year progresses. However, one thing we have yet to see in action is an interesting addition to this year's Fédération Internationale de
l'Automobile (FIA) Sporting Regulations – the Virtual Safety Car, or VSC.

If qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix was something of a breakthough for Lewis Hamilton, with his first pole position at the Sakhir circuit and his
fourth in a row this season, it was an even bigger breakthrough for Sebastian Vettel and Ferrari who split the Mercedes on the grid on a dry track for the
first time and who now look a major threat for the race. Vettel’s front row start in Malaysia was achieved in wet conditions.

Lewis Hamilton continued his strong start to the 2015 season by beating Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg to pole in China, although in the end it was a
close run thing, and the Briton had to rely on his first run in Q3 to secure the top spot. It was his third consecutive pole in Shanghai, and it puts him
in the perfect position to win the race from the front on Sunday.

This was a fantastic race with an unexpected outcome, as Sebastian Vettel breathed life into the 2015 Formula One championship with a superb victory for
Ferrari in Sepang, as Mercedes were outperformed for the first time in over a year.

Lewis Hamilton did not have the cleanest of weekends prior to qualifying for the Malaysian Grand Prix, spending more time in the garage with technical
problems on Friday than on the race track, but starting from pole position he is likely to control the race as he did in the opening round in Melbourne two
weeks ago.

As ever in motor sport, there are a lot of dissatisfied teams and drivers leaving Australia after the first Grand Prix of the season with a feeling of ‘if
only.’ That feeling doesn’t extend to the Mercedes AMG Petronas team which finished in a resounding one-two, Lewis Hamilton ahead of Nico Rosberg, so that
they already have an extraordinary 28 point lead in the Constructors championship.

Mercedes AMG Petronas driver Lewis Hamilton claimed a stunning pole position in the first Formula One™ qualifying session of the year in Melbourne on
Saturday afternoon. In plummeting temperatures, the English driver blitzed the opposition - even his own teammate Nico Rosberg - by half a second. It was a
remarkable performance by Hamilton for his third pole position since 2008 when he also won the race.

I took my first photo in 1983 while still at college, photographing Ayrton Senna in Formula 3. My brother, Keith Sutton, was Senna’s PR representative and
photographer. I then joined Keith in 1985 and we set up Sutton Photographic in Towcester, only 5 miles from Silverstone and the heart of the motorsport
industry, where many F1 teams and engine companies are based.

Of all the incoming 2015 Formula One regulations, the one that drew the most attention over the winter was the introduction of a points system through
which up and coming young drivers would be able to qualify for a superlicence for 2016 and beyond, formalising the route to Formula One™.

After a dramatic and enthralling 2014 Formula One™ season, which saw the impressive introduction of some ground breaking technology, a number of strategic changes have been made to the 2015 technical and sporting regulations.

Winter Formula One™ testing is a notoriously unreliable barometer of how the Formula One™ teams will perform during the season, especially the first test with the new cars. This week, the cars ran for the first time in Jerez, Spain at a four day test, the first of three such sessions before the first Grand Prix on March 15 in Melbourne.